


Bakuhatsu

by The_Cats_Paw



Category: Naruto
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Haruno Sakura, Eventual Romance, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Mokuton Sakura, Need To Grow Up First, Pre-Konoha Village, Slow Burn, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, more tags probably
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-07-18 05:02:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16111367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Cats_Paw/pseuds/The_Cats_Paw
Summary: Kaguya was defeated, but before Team Seven could make it back home, an explosion of chakra sent Sakura careening backwards to the Warring Era. Stuck in a younger body, can Sakura figure out if her boys came back also? And who on earth decided that she would end up stuck with a young Madara and Hashirama? MadaSaku, when they're a bit older.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> New story! I know I shouldn't but I've never been able to help it before, so why should now be any different? :P
> 
> Anyway, this is a time travel and de-aging fic, with a Mokuton using Sakura. I mean, why not? She uses earth and water, and if Moegi can do it, why not Sakura? I know, I know, Kishi's probably gonna come up with some 'explanation' for Moegi having it, but whatever.
> 
> At least it's more believable than the fics that have Naruto with the sharingan, of all things. :P

The urchin glared at anyone that came near or noticed her, teeth bared in a snarl. The girl was small, dressed in rags, and covered in dirt, like she hadn't bathed in years. Or  _ever_.

She wandered through the streets of the small village, mostly unnoticed, despite the mop of pink hair on her head. Slipping through the crowds, small hands went unnoticed as they slipped into pouches, plucking food from stalls, the owners of which probably  _still_  hadn't noticed that anything was missing. The day was spent like this, then most of her her spoils were dropped off in a dingy little alley, where other children waited, hungry and dirty, for something substantial to eat.

And then, when the sun started setting, the child made her way out of the village.

Walking along the main path for only a few minutes, she stopped briefly, checking to make sure no one was around, then darted off the main road and into the nearby thicket. Following a familiar path, to her at least, she ended up in a hidden clearing that no one had found yet, where a small and rickety, but deceptively stable hut stood. As she stepped past the boundary of the trees, a small dome shaped barrier glowed.

Letting out a sigh, the girl went into the hut, pulling out the remainder of her day's haul and storing it all in cupboards and containers. Then she closed her eyes, and the dirt faded from her body. Mentally thanking her mentor, she then set about gathering up some clothes to go to a nearby stream to bathe. The girl, who wasn't really a child, made her way through the woods, past her barrier, to a place she knew that  _no one_  went to. The simple reason was that it was too difficult to get to, unless you were a ninja.

And as far as Sakura knew, there were no ninja in the surrounding areas.

Haruno Sakura, a twenty year old woman in the body of a nine year old child. She'd been here almost three years already, since the day that an exploding goddess (not  _literally…_  well, maybe) had pushed her into the past, de-aging her at an alarming rate. Her coils had been fried in a chakra overload, and her yin seal had been shattered. With a younger body, she'd lost a lot of the physical strength she'd come to rely on, and with her haywire chakra system, she'd been incredibly vulnerable for some time.

Now, it was a completely different story.

Once her coils had healed, mostly on their own since she'd been unable to do anything for them herself, Sakura had discovered a rather neat side effect. The size of her chakra coils were almost triple what they used to be, and after working manually on her stamina and strength, she was once again able to punch craters in the earth. Almost immediately once her chakra had recovered, she'd worked on reapplying her yin seal, and even though it irked that she'd had to start from scratch once more, it was already at full capacity. Thanks to her larger chakra network, of course, and already hidden from view by a tweaked version of her shishou's vanity technique.

The same technique she used to hide in plain sight as a dirty street urchin.

There were other…  _unexpected_  side-effects from Kaguya's insane chakra tearing through her system. The  _biggest_  was one she'd taken quite some time to figure out, and even when she had, Sakura'd been in denial for a few weeks afterwards. She was in the past.  _In the past_. She had no idea what had happened to her boys, though. Sasuke, Naruto, and Kakashi had been right there with her. But they weren't  _here_  with her. Was she really the only one that had been sent back? Or were they also here somewhere, possibly de-aged as she was?

Another was one that she considered to be even more impossible, since she didn't have the DNA connection for it to actually  _be_ possible, artificially  _or_  naturally. Sakura had been experimenting with her jutsu only ten months ago, running through water and earth jutsu, since those two elements were her affinities. Without thinking, she'd combined the two, and had somehow caused a nearby sapling to grow out of control. It had freaked her out, and her panic, which hadn't helped matters, had somehow caused the wood of the rapidly growing tree to warp until she finally got herself under control.

The tree had been almost grotesquely mangled, and Sakura had put it out of its misery by using it up as firewood. Since then, she'd carefully experimented with her brand new ability, and luckily hadn't had another incident like that.

Cutting off her thoughts as she reached the stream, Sakura went about her bathing ritual. The rags were stripped off and set aside, the soap she'd 'liberated' from a store in the village put to use scrubbing the actual dirt she'd accumulated from wandering the dirty streets of the nearby town. This era she was in, which she'd figured out was the Warring States Era, wasn't very sanitary, and she'd almost cried when she'd discovered that it was also pre- indoor plumbing.

Despite that, Sakura knew enough about sanitisation that she was at least able to keep herself clean and free of germs. She might be tempted to find someone and show them how to do it too, but there were a couple of factors in the way. One, she was  _nine_ , and children, or even women at this point, weren't really all that respected. No one would listen to her, she knew it. And two, Sakura knew that they weren't far off from the start of application of hygiene to the standards she was used to any way. They were maybe less than a decade away from Hishida Kazuo publishing his revolutionary texts, anyway.

As she scrubbed, Sakura's mind wandered to family and friends that she missed. Nostalgia washed over her even as she scrubbed soapy water through her hair. Taking a deep breath, she ducked under the water, staying under as the soap and dirt rinsed off. Considering she could hold her breath for about ten minutes, Sakura decided to linger at the bottom. The water was clear enough for her to have her eyes open, and she watched a few fish swim by, skittish of the intruder into their realm.

When her brain started yelling at her for oxygen, she kicked back up to the surface, only to scream when she got there at the sight of a boy with brown hair and wide, shocked, brown eyes staring at her from the bank.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaguya was defeated, but before Team Seven could make it back home, an explosion of chakra sent Sakura careening backwards to the Warring Era. Stuck in a younger body, can Sakura figure out if her boys came back also? And who on earth decided that she would end up stuck with a young Madara and Hashirama? MadaSaku, when they're a bit older.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter! The internet is going off in a moment, so I'm rushing to get this out. Also, I'm a bit tired, so I'll check up on this in the morning.

"EEEEEKKKK!"

Sakura screamed at the top of her lungs, startling the boy in front of her. "Pervert! Dirty pervert! Get away!"

The boy turned as red as a tomato, fell backwards, slapped his hands over his eyes, then yelled, "Sorry! Sorry! I didn't realise someone was here!"

"Turn around, pervert!" Sakura commanded, and the still beet red boy did so.

Keeping an eye on him, Sakura got out of the water and grabbed her towel, wrapping it around herself. She grabbed her clothes and darted into the nearby trees, pulling her clothes on in record time. Then she came back out, stormed over to the boy, and proceeded to whack him several times over the head.

"What do you think you're doing here, perving on girls!?" she yelled at him.

"Sorry!" he apologised again. "It's just… my friend and I usually meet here, and… well, I didn't  _know_  someone else would be here!"

"You and your friend?" Sakura demanded, enunciating with another whack over the head. "Are  _they_  a pervert too?!"

"No! No! It's not like that, I swear!"

Sakura sighed. "Whatever," she dismissed. "I've been living here for months, and I've never seen anyone else here. Why on earth would you meet a friend in an out of the way place like this?"

The boy shrugged. "I don't want my father interfering," he admitted to her. "I have a lot of responsibilities, and I doubt he would approve of me making friends outside the clan."

So he was a clan kid then?

"What's your name, brat?" Sakura asked.

"Hashirama," he told her, then pouted. "I'm not a  _brat_! I'm older than you! Er, I think. How old  _are_  you, anyway? Hey! Are you listening? Hey!"

But Sakura had pretty much blanked out in shock at the boy's name. Hashirama?  _Senju_  Hashirama? If it  _really_  was him (and it was quite likely, considering the time period, among other things) then that meant his friend was… Shit!

A light thump on her head brought her out of her thoughts.

"Hey!" Hashirama said. "You spaced out there, girlie."

Sakura glared at him. "My name's not girlie, it's  _Sakura_!"

"Okay, okay, Sakura then," he held his hands up in submission, then he grinned. "Now that we know each other's names, we can be friends!"

Sakura rolled her eyes. "What do our names have anything to do with that?" she asked.

"Well, having true friends in the world is always a good thing," he told her. "Especially when…"

He trailed off, likely thinking about all the fighting that was going on.

"Especially when you don't know how long you're gonna be around?" she asked.

Wide eyes shot to hers, and Hashirama nodded.

It was dark now, the sun had set while Sakura had spaced out, and she shivered lightly in the cool evening breeze. "If you meet your friend here, then where is he?" she asked, and Hashirama frowned.

"That's a good point," he mused. "Maybe he couldn't get away today?"

Sakura sighed, then started gathering the rest of her things together. Once that was done, she began walking back to her hut.

"Where are you going?" Hashirama asked, following her.

"Home," she told him. "Get lost."

"But this spot isn't that close to the village, and it's dark now," he said, a small pout twitching his lips. "I know! I'll walk back to the village with you, make sure you get there safe."

An earnest grin spread across his face, and Sakura felt a slight twinge, remembering the similar grin of a certain blond knuckle-head she knew. A knuckle-head she desperately  _missed_.

She sighed and told him, "I don't live in the village."

He followed her mostly in silence until they reached a small cliff-top. Hashirama looked down and saw the top of her hut. "That's where you live?" he asked. "But how are you going to… uh,  _ohhh_."

He'd trailed off once Sakura started walking down the cliff, taking only a few seconds to reach the bottom. After a moment, he followed her down, and Sakura sighed in frustration that he wouldn't  _go away_. She had no desire to meddle with history, certainly not at this point, so she needed to make sure he went away and  _stayed_  away.

Hashirama followed her all the way to her barrier, which he eyed with wide eyes, especially once it wouldn't let him pass. "Hey, are you part of a clan?" he asked her. "Did you run away? Is that why you live out here? These seals are impressive. Are they Uzumaki? Are  _you_  Uzumaki? That would certainly explain the pink hair, kind of…"

"Do you ever  _shut up_?" Sakura demanded, turning on him with a glare that could freeze an active volcano.

Another pout, and a bout of depression hanging over his head, but Sakura simply stared at him until he peeked up at her, smiling sheepishly at the look on her face.

"Okay, so you don't want to talk about it," Hashirama spoke eventually. "But, uh… can I come in? It might be a bit late for me to get back to our camp. I'm supposed to be on patrol in this area anyways…"

Sakura stared at him, he gazed earnestly back.

She  _glared_ at him, but Hashirama just smiled as cheerily as possible.

Finally giving up, Sakura went over to the barrier, reached out, and  _pulled_  him in, to his utter delight. "Don't go thinking you can just come here any time you want," she told him as he followed her over to her little shack. "You can't get in here without me, and this is only a one time deal, you got that?"

Hashirama nodded, and Sakura continued, "I also expect that when you see your friend next, you tell him you'll be meeting somewhere else. That's  _my_  washing spot, and I don't want to see you perving there again, you got that?"

"But Madara and I have been meeting there for a year already," Hashirama whined like a kicked puppy. "Why do  _we_  have to move?"

"Because you're a pervert," Sakura told him in a tone that brooked no argument. "That spot's the only good one for bathing anywhere nearby. The water's either too shallow, fast, or exposed in other places. Now, you can stay here until you feel ready to head back to where you came from, but then you're  _never_  coming back, you got that?"

Hashirama nodded morosely.

He left sometime during the night, back to his clan before he likely got into trouble. Sakura hoped that would be the last she saw of him, but when she was back at her spot the next day, he was back, complete with a set of sheepish grins and a scowling Uchiha best friend who had the grumpy, almost constipated look every Uchiha she'd known before had down to an art form.

Sakura sighed and asked Kami,  _Why? Why me?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha! She can't escape them! :P


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaguya was defeated, but before Team Seven could make it back home, an explosion of chakra sent Sakura careening backwards to the Warring Era. Stuck in a younger body, can Sakura figure out if her boys came back also? And who on earth decided that she would end up stuck with a young Madara and Hashirama? MadaSaku, when they're a bit older.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter! :) Wow, I haven’t felt like writing this for awhile, and honestly, what I have been writing, wasn’t this. This was all done just now, and is completely different from what I was going to do.  
> Important notice! I’m changing my pen name next year! :)

There was a loud yell, a splash, then a raucous laugh. Sakura rolled her eyes and went back to what she was doing. It had been a few months, and by now, she was used to the noise that Hashirama and Madara made whenever they were here. Or she should say, the noise that _Hashirama_ made. No doubt he’d just managed to dump Madara into the river, since that was his laugh she’d heard.

At this point, Sakura was at her hut, working on some medicinal salve. She sold it in the village, while under a henge, through the local healer. It was her only honest source of income at this point, pilfering pockets only got you so much, especially when you gave the bulk of it to the local orphans and street kids. It paid for the supplies she couldn’t grow herself, as well as the loosening of tongues of travelling merchants and other visitors to the village.

Sakura was still searching for her boys, after all, and information was like _gold_ to her.

Speaking of boys… A crashing noise sounded, and a moment later, Hashirama came tumbling down the cliff face, right in front of her barrier.

“Sakura!” he called. “Save me!”

The reason for his distress came charging along a moment later in the form of a sopping wet, incredibly angry Madara. “Hashirama!” he yelled. “Get back over here! That _brat_ isn’t going to save you now!”

Sakura bristled at being called a brat, but really, it was kind of her own fault, since she’d thrown quite the tantrum that day when the two had shown up, after she’d _expressly_ forbade Hashirama from bringing his friend back to the river. Madara had haughtily declared that he didn’t take orders from wretched street rats, called her a brat for her temper, then proceeded to ignore her following tantrum.

_Jerk face._

Sakura stood, hands on hips, facing the two of them. “What did I tell you about coming down here?” she demanded of Hashirama.

“…Not to,” the Senju heir mumbled, but then cried, “But Sakura! Madara wants to throw me in the river!”

“From the sounds of it, you shoved him in first,” Sakura said. “Get back up there and take it like a man.”

Hashirama whimpered as Madara dragged him off, and soon enough, Sakura heard a squeal and a large splash. She smiled slightly despite her situation.

After some time, Sakura decided that she needed some water from the river. So she got the scroll she usually sealed water into and headed up there. It’d been quiet for some time, so hopefully that meant that the two morons were gone. When she got there, Hashirama was indeed gone, but Madara was still there, tearing apart leaves in his hands. _How apt_ , the deepest, bitter part of her whispered.

“Where’d the idiot go?” Sakura asked, coming up and laying out her scroll, unsealing it.

“Home,” was Madara’s succinct response.

Sakura worked silently for awhile, noting in her peripherals that Madara would occasionally glance her way. Once she was done, Sakura sealed everything back up, tucked it away, then leaned back to stare at Madara. He stared back, and the two held one another’s gaze for a bit before Sakura spoke.

“You’re an Uchiha.”

Madara stiffened instantly. “What makes you say that?” he asked, his voice low and a bit dangerous.

“You look exactly like an Uchiha I once met,” Sakura told him. “In miniature.” Of course, he had no idea she was talking about his _future self_. “He attacked me and my friends, which is how I got separated from them.” _Sort of_.

Hashirama, is all his charismatic glory, had managed to wrangle a bit of her story from her. Sakura had told them that she was separated from her important people, though she’d remained tight-lipped on how. Of course, Hashirama had then vowed to one day get the whole tale from her. Idiot. Not likely, considering. But it had given her a shiver of premonition, reminding her of Naruto and his promises that he made sure to keep.

“So you think I’m an Uchiha just because I look like the one who attacked you?” Madara asked, and Sakura realised that he was about to either attack her himself, or take off and never return.

Turning to him, she said, “I’m not going to tell anyone, you don’t need to get all defensive. Your secret’s safe with me. I won’t even tell Hashirama. Promise.”

“Why are you bringing this up?” Madara demanded.

“Because, your clan is semi-nomadic, right?” Sakura asked. “You’ve got a bunch of forts, but you don’t stay in one too long, in case your enemies find you.”

“What of it?”

Turning to him, Sakura asked, “Has anyone in your clan heard any rumours of two boys, one blond and blue eyed, the other with Uchiha-like colouring? Or a man with silver hair who wears a half-mask? Or a full one, I’m not sure what he’d do…”

Madara stared at her a moment. “These are your friends? The ones you’ve been looking for?”

Sakura nodded, but Madara shook his own head. “I haven’t heard anything,” he told her. “But the one you mentioned, the Uchiha-looking one. Is he…?”

Sakura nodded. “He’s Uchiha,” she confirmed. “But he’s never lived with your clan.”

She knew, of course, that this fact would actually get Madara interested, and he’d probably pay more attention to news in his clan, if only to satiate his own curiosity. “If I hear something, I’ll let you know,” he said. “Maybe.”

Before Sakura could utter a word of protest at his words, he took off, leaving her huffing as she gathered her scrolls together.

OoOoO

As he headed back to his family camp, Madara pondered over what Sakura had told him. An Uchiha who hadn’t been raised by his family… The only way that could come about was if someone unknowingly sired a kid with some villager somewhere. Or something like that. Because there were _no_ Uchiha who didn’t live with the clan. His family made sure.

Or at least, until now, if Sakura were to be believed.

He wondered why she’d told him? Was it really just to find some information on them? She risked him telling his father, but then of course, he’d have to tell him where he found this out… Still, he hadn’t been entirely honest when he’d said he’d heard nothing. Well, nothing on the Uchiha boy and the silver haired man. But the blond… That rang a bell.

A few years ago now, there’d been a strange boy, one with blond hair and blue eyes. He’d clashed with him just outside a village, where Madara had been with his father for a supply run. It was before he’d met Hashirama, and honestly, with the way they’d both acted, Hashirama had reminded him of that kid. If he wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere because of that mouth of his, then he’d be about Sakura’s age…

Maybe he should have told her, but he’d been put off guard from her calling him out as an Uchiha. _Not_ that he wasn’t proud to be one, he was, but it was dangerous to identify yourself with a clan without enough support, in case the person you met was an enemy. It was just one reason why he and Hashirama had agreed not to reveal their family names.

As the clan compound came in sight, Madara decided that when he saw Sakura next, if she really hadn’t ratted him out to Hashirama, then he’d tell her. _If_ she didn’t annoy him as usual, that is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why are ending author notes for this, and a couple other fics, ending up on the wrong chapter?

**Author's Note:**

> So, you might know who the boy is. I'll give you two guesses. ;) No dialogue this chapter, but there will be next chapter.
> 
> Bakuhatsu: Explosion. Referencing the fact that Kaguya's chakra 'exploded' to send Sakura back.


End file.
